Syrian slaughter: Investigating alleged war crimes via social media

Video emerged on November 1 which appeared to show a group of prisoners being summarily executed. As we monitored the conversation on social media, there were claims that the video showed Free Syrian Army fighters executing prisoners belonging to the Syrian army. The flurry of activity appeared to have been prompted by the posting of the video to a YouTube channel linked to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

As the discussion continued, a spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights stated the video, though “difficult to verify”, could constitute “a war crime”.

Through investigation of social media sources, Storyful was able to establish with some precision the location where this incident took place, and the timeline of events.

The SOHR referred to the deaths of 28 members of the army in an attack on the Hamicho checkpoint, between Saraqib and Ariha:

Provinces of Aleppo and Idlib: killed 28 of the regular forces, at least after an attack by fighters from several battalions on three barriers west and north of the city Sracb … were seized armored vehicles from two checkpoints and were destroyed barrier Hamicho on the road Sracb-Ariha and activists from the observatory confirmed they had seen the bodies of regular troops at checkpoints and killed five fighters of the rebel fighter battalions

Our priority was to try and track down the earliest version of the video online, as the version prompting the Twitter conversation was clearly a ‘scrape’ or copy. The most promising lead was a logo on the video. The logo drifted briefly in and out of the frame, and was badly blurred, meaning the best we were able to isolate was the screen grab below:

A translation of ‘Mountain Shield Brigade’ to Arabic, via Google Translate led us to a Facebook account that prominently displayed the logo, corroborating the information. A link from that account to another showed that the group had been using the logo since at least July 2012.

The next step was to search YouTube again with the Arabic translation of ‘Mountain Shield Brigade’. This led us to a YouTube channel in the name of the rebel unit and to an earlier version of the video. The logo only glimpsed in the copied video was clearly visible in the earlier version.

Other videos on the account showed features from the same location, and the events shown strongly suggested they were taken at the same time as the ‘execution’ video. The contentious video has since been removed from view on the channel, but we preserved the copy below (original link here):

Much of the social media conversation turned to the responsibility for the executions, with jihadist group Jabhat al-Nusra being singled out. While we do not know what links, if any, exist between Jabhat al-Nusra and the ‘Shield Mountain Brigade’, it is notable that Jabhat al-Nusra have consistently used a distinctive logo – seen here – which is clearly different to that seen in the videos under discussion here.

Several hours later, an Arabic-language search for Hamicho, the location named as the site of the incident, turned up the video below. Although posted to a rarely used YouTube channel, it clearly showed the same group of buildings seen in the ‘execution’ video, and was captioned as being at the Hamicho checkpoint on November 1:

Below is yet another video of the same area. This gave us a wider view of the scene, this time from the north-east. It was posted on November 1 to a YouTube channel using the same username as a now-defunct Bambuser account, which carried live footage from the area.

The wider view of the buildings, and the presence of a tower, meant a greater possibility of being able to geo-locate the video. Taking our lead from reports of the events, we searched along the road between Saraqib and Ariha on Google Maps, starting near Saraqib because it featured more prominently in accounts of the incident. Just three kilometres west of Saraqib, we found what we were looking for:

By using social media, satellite imagery, and our contacts, Storyful was able to establish a quite precise timeline of the rebel assault on the Hamicho checkpoint, and its exact location. By drilling down to original versions of the key videos, we were able to establish the names of the rebel brigades described as participating in the assault.

Ultimately, we were unable to confirm with certainty whether the armed group that carried out the killings was affiliated to the Free Syrian Army, insofar as any such formal ‘affiliations’ exist. We found little evidence, however, that Jabhat al-Nusra was involved in the assault, or in the executions. Most importantly, we were able to build a clear picture of what happened at Hamicho checkpoint and to geolocate, with certainty, one of the most shocking incidents of the Syrian civil war.

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